(Un)conscious Bias in the Astronomical Profession: Universal Recommendations to improve Fairness, Inclusiveness, and Representation

TL;DR

This paper discusses the pervasive impact of unconscious bias in astronomy, highlighting tools and guidelines developed by STScI to promote fairness, diversity, and inclusiveness across various scientific and career activities, proposing standardization of these methods.

Contribution

It introduces universal recommendations and standardized methods to mitigate unconscious bias and enhance diversity and fairness in the astronomical community.

Findings

Implementation of anonymized peer review increased fairness.

Guidelines improved diversity in STScI activities.

Standardized bias mitigation methods can be adopted universally.

Abstract

(Un)conscious bias affects every aspect of the astronomical profession, from scientific activities (e.g., invitations to join collaborations, proposal selections, grant allocations, publication review processes, and invitations to attend and speak at conferences) to activities more strictly related to career advancement (e.g., reference letters, fellowships, hiring, promotion, and tenure). For many, (un)conscious bias is still the main hurdle to achieving excellence, as the most diverse talents encounter bigger challenges and difficulties to reach the same milestones than their more privileged colleagues. Over the past few years, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has constructed tools to raise awareness of (un)conscious bias and has designed guidelines and goals to increase diversity representation and outcome in its scientific activities, including career-related matters and STScI sponsored fellowships, conferences, workshops, and colloquia. STScI has also addressed (un)conscious bias in the peer-review process by anonymizing submission and evaluation of Hubble Space Telescope (and soon to be James Webb Space Telescope) observing proposals. In this white paper we present a plan to standardize these methods with the expectation that these universal recommendations will truly increase diversity, inclusiveness and fairness in Astronomy if applied consistently throughout all the scientific activities of the Astronomical community.